photo credit: infomatique

To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

— Anonymous

Recently I received the following story in an email.  I don’t know who wrote it as it wasn’t attributed to anyone when I received it.  If you know who wrote it, please let us know.

I dreamt that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around. We walked side-by-side inside a large workroom filled with angels. My angel guide stopped in front of the first section and said, “This is the Receiving Section. Here, all petitions to God said in prayer are received.”

I looked around in this area, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world.

Then we moved on down a long corridor until we reached the second section.

The angel then said to me, “This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them.” I noticed again how busy it was there. There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.

Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small station. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. “This is the Acknowledgment Section,” my angel friend quietly admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed. “How is it that there is no work going on here?” I asked.

“So sad,” the angel sighed. “After people receive the blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments.”

“How does one acknowledge God’s blessings?” I asked.

“Simple,” the angel answered. “Just say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’”

I just love this story.  It is so clear in its message.  Gimme… Gimme… Gimme…  It’s truly unfair to our parents who trained us better.  We were taught to say thank you.  What happened?

Now we go around saying, “What have you done for me lately?”  We treat life the same way.  Yeah, we have enough to eat and clothes on our backs and a place to live, but “We have so many problems!” OR reasons to complain.  Why do I bring it up… because our ability to recognize our blessings directly relates to our view of the world.

Blessings and Resilience

Are you blessed?  If you don’t feel blessed, how do you feel?  My guess is that you aren’t neutral.  You either feel blessed or not-blessed or maybe even cursed.  What does it do to your ability to be resilient when in your heart of hearts you feel less-than-blessed?  When you feel less-than-blessed, don’t you feel a little beaten down?  Or maybe a lot?

If resilience is the measure of our ability to deal with adversity, then just like a ball that goes flat and doesn’t bounce very well, we need to remember to keep ourselves “inflated” with hope.  Research has shown that human beings “suffer” from a recency effect.  What this means is that we most strongly remember things that occurred recently.  So, if we’ve had a run of bad luck, we tend to feel that our luck will continue to be bad.  We expect bad and we generally get what we expect.

Our reaction is similar to the phenomenon where once we decide to be a blonde, we see blondes everywhere.  In the same way, if we’re deflated (discouraged) about how life is treating us, we tend to notice all the bad things that happen.  If we don’t change our view of the world, we’ll keep noticing all the bad things that happen and none of the good.  Most of us resent the bad stuff and, guess what, resentment doesn’t lead to gratitude.  It does lead to an angel with nothing to do.

In my last post, I told you about Teri and her accident – pedestrian vs. car: She fought the car and the car won).  Some of us would look at that and the pain, change in plans, cost of treatment and start whining.  Not Teri – at least not all the time – Teri says, “It could have been so much worse.”  How?  Well, she could have been killed.  She could have been permanently disabled.  The driver could have been uninsured… etc., etc., and so forth.  Instead, Teri is grateful.  She’s basically OK – in some pain, but probably no long-term damage.  She says, “Thank you! Thank you!  Thank you!”  (Lest you think her an angel, someday I’ll tell you about her dissolute youth.)

Ya Gotta Have Hope… Miles and Miles and Miles of Hope!!

The real kicker here is that the more that Teri feels lucky and grateful, the better her attitude is.  The better her attitude, the more she’s willing to push through the pain and the better her odds of a quick and complete recovery.

If you’ve ever run a marathon, you know that one of the best parts is when it’s all over and you’ve overcome your self-doubts and the physical pain of the run itself.  It isn’t that there’s no pain, it’s that the runner believes that she can overcome and finish.  Hitting the wall is a physical phenomenon AND a mental one.  When the runner feels their worst (at the wall), they begin to question whether they can get through it, whether they’re tough enough.  Once the runner decides that she will return “with her shield or on it,” it’s “just” a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.  No small matter, putting one foot in front of the other – and something to be truly grateful for.

Life is the same.  It wears us down.  We either decide that we will persevere or we give up.  Often, we’re not that clear about the decision.  We don’t actively work to persevere, but we don’t consciously give up either.

Developing a habit of gratitude helps us to remember that there is good with the bad.  It feeds our hope.  With hope, we can put one foot in front of the other and triumphantly cross the finish line.